


the broken bones you had to use to build your ladder

by 1848pianist



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: BAMF Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Canon Universe, Character Death, F/M, Families of Choice, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Protective Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Rescue Missions, Teen Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Timeline What Timeline, Trope Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26600284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1848pianist/pseuds/1848pianist
Summary: While trying to save Ciri, Geralt falls into a trap set for him. This time, it's up to Geralt's family to save him from danger - and possibly himself.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 27
Kudos: 88
Collections: Witcher Big Bang





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon setting but do note that I have chopped book, game, and show canon into pieces and made a collage out of it as it suits my preferences and the plot of this fic. CW for violence to be on the safe side.
> 
> Amazing, phenomenal, outstanding [insert gif of Lady Gaga] art by ladivvinatravestia (Tumblr/AO3), who put up with me as I flailed wildly to meet deadlines and check-ins. Thanks also to @carlodivarga-s on Tumblr for beta reading and providing much-needed moral support despite Not Even Going Here. 
> 
> Title from "Younger" by the Mountain Goats. (Though if you want a TMG song that really captures the essence of this fic, I recommend "Spent Gladiator 2").

“Not so fast, Ciri.”

The girl huffs with impatience but reins in her horse. She looks back through the trees and rolls her eyes at Geralt while she waits for him to catch up.

“I heard a rabbit. I could have caught it.” She’s tense as a coiled spring, ready to dash onward into the forest at the first opportunity.

Geralt heard the rabbit, too, but he’s more interested in the scent of a herd of deer up ahead.

“We’ll stop soon. I think we can do better than a lone rabbit for dinner.”

Ciri snorts. “Fine.”

She falls in next to Geralt, keeping Roach’s pace, at least for the moment.

“I _could_ have caught it, though. If you’d let me.”

Amused, Geralt glances over at her. “I know.”

He fears that her headstrong nature will get them both into trouble sooner rather than later, but he finds himself continually impressed by her courage and quick wit. Though every part of a witcher’s life is new to her, she’s as fast a learner as Geralt has ever seen.

It was not so long ago that he couldn’t have begun to imagine himself caring for a child. Now, he can’t imagine life without Ciri and her keen intensity. She terrifies and amazes him in equal measure.

Unaware of the thoughts running through his head, Ciri clicks her tongue at him.

“I’m not going to run off. You don’t have to stare at me.”

“Hmm.”

Ciri tosses her hair. “I think you’re riding slower than before on purpose. When are we going to stop to eat?”

Geralt smiles faintly. “I’m listening to what’s up ahead. Can you hear it?”

Ciri frowns and strains her hearing, leaning over her horse’s mane. After a moment, she sits up again and shakes her head.

“Never mind, it’s too far away. It’s a herd of deer. We’ll catch one, if we’re quiet.” Geralt has learned from Jaskier over the years that he always manages to over- or under-estimate human senses. After so many decades as a witcher, it’s all but impossible to imagine the world Jaskier and Ciri live in, one where they aren’t bombarded with a constant onslaught of sounds and smells.

They move on, continuing with caution so as not to alert the herd.

“Geralt, I hear them!” Ciri whispers.

He nods, then signals to Roach to stop. They’re close.

“Stay with the horses. Wait for my signal.”

Ciri looks disappointed not to be coming along, but she relents. Probably only because she’s hungry. “All right. Hurry!”

“You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.”

Geralt moves quickly but silently through the woods, tracking the faint hoofbeats and quiet breaths of his quarry. He’s already begun to single out one of the older individuals, a hair slower than the rest, lingering on the edge of the herd. He catches up to it at the edge of a clearing, hanging back in the trees to wait for the right moment. A crossbow bolt would be the easiest thing, but then again, what are witcher senses for if not to show off a little?

Like the wolf of his school, he strikes quickly, cutting the animal’s throat with a single movement. A fast, almost painless death. The rest of the herd flees, terrified but in no danger, at least not from the witcher.

He straightens up and is about to whistle for Ciri when he hears a bird’s call of alarm. Geralt looks around. A delayed reaction to the flight of the deer?

Then a scream.

“Ciri!”

Geralt sprints back through the forest, no longer concerned about keeping his footsteps silent. He’s fast, swifter than any human, but not fast enough. Ciri is gone when he reaches the horses, but her scent lingers.

“Go!” Geralt shouts as he jumps up into Roach’s saddle.

“Geralt!”

Her scream is terrified but strong. She’s in one piece, at least for the time being.

Even his enhanced sight he can’t pierce through the dense foliage. He digs his heels into Roach’s side, weaving between the trees and ignoring the branches that snag his armor.

Then, up ahead, he catches a flash of ash-blonde hair.

“Ciri!”

He draws his sword.

Before he can catch up to the rider ahead of him, something hard hits him in the chest. He’s thrown back, slipping out of the saddle.

“No!”

He wakes with a start the moment before he hits the ground.

Roach is leaning over him. She snorts, then noses him in the ribs again.

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” he grumbles. Geralt forces himself to slow his breathing and regain control over his racing pulse. He sits up, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“A dream. Fuck.”

Except for Roach, he’s as alone as when he went to sleep. Ciri is safe at the Temple of Melitele, presumably asleep in bed. It’s still the middle of the night.

“Fuck!” he says again, for good measure.


	2. dreams and warnings

He has the same dream three nights in a row. Each morning, he wakes feeling like he hasn’t slept at all. It’s beginning to slow his reaction times, muddling his thoughts.

“What’s the matter with me, Roach?” he sighs aloud.

Nightmares are nothing new, even vivid ones that feel as real as his waking moments. Such is the life of a witcher, the nature of their work and the things they see. But never has he had the same dream over and over again without interruption, forcing itself on him every time he closes his eyes. It’s enough to drive anyone to madness. The nature of his work, however, does not allow him the time to indulge in madness.

Foolish as it would be, he has half a mind to turn around and head for the temple, just to confirm that Ciri’s all right. Just to be sure.

He pushes the impulse aside and rides on, reminding himself that his job is to hunt monsters and be paid for it, not guard one princess like an overprotective brooding hen. Destiny or no destiny. And Ciri would balk, no doubt, to be compared to a defenseless chick.

Besides, after so many weeks in the woods without a contract, his supply of oats for Roach is getting low. Not to mention his stocks of food for himself. No sleep and soon no food – a recipe for disaster. It’s himself he should be worried about, really.

He could reach the next town by nightfall if he pressed Roach, but he decides that one more night won’t make a difference. He might finally be tired enough to sleep without dreaming, and for all the comfort a real bed would offer, the last thing he needs is loud, drunken neighbors at an inn. Or a fight over his inhuman presence in a respectable town.

Tired as he is, he’s reluctant to close his eyes.

He sighs. “Some witcher I am.”

Roach swishes her tail. As ever, she says nothing in response.

Geralt stares into the fire, watching the flames dance while his mind drifts into something like meditation. His heightened senses stay alert to the forest around him, but his mind is elsewhere.

Eventually, a rustling deeper in the woods rouses him. He glances at Roach, but the mare is calmly nosing for acorns in the roots of the tree where she’s tethered. Geralt stands slowly, sure he’s heard something.

Another rustle; a crack of twigs. A voice.

A familiar voice.

Geralt takes off on foot towards the source of the noise, not even bothering to untie Roach.

The voice again, rising in pitch and volume, just distant enough that he can’t yet make out the words. Geralt forces himself to sprint faster.

He bursts into a clearing, his worst fears confirmed when he sees Yennefer caught in the grip of a hooded figure. She is wild, casting spells even as she sinks her teeth into the arm seizing her in a chokehold. Her violet eyes blaze with fury.

“Yennefer!”

Geralt charges forward, but the shadowy figure strikes a blow to her temple, knocking her unconscious. Before Geralt can reach them, he opens a portal, disappearing in a burst of magic that makes Geralt’s head spin and ache.

“No!”

The portal has long closed when he reaches it. He knows they leave traces of magic, but he has neither the skill to detect them nor the power to do anything about it if he could. His last image of Yennefer seems seared into his eyes, a trickle of blood running from her hairline as her knees buckled.

Suddenly, his vision blurs. When he opens his eyes, he sees only his campfire. There is no clearing, no hooded figure, no Yennefer. Behind him, Roach whickers softly.

Geralt drops his face into his hands. It seems his dreams are now haunting him even in the daytime.

Witcher’s code or no witcher’s code, this can’t continue. Although night is falling fast, he collects his swords and begins saddling Roach. Hoping fervently that he’s wasting his time, he starts towards the Temple of Melitele.

*

His dreams grow worse along the way. Now, instead of seeing Ciri captured, he watches a hooded figure slit her throat in front of him again and again and again. Each time, their gazes lock, her eyes accusing, _Why didn’t you save me?_ He is always too late.

Next comes Jaskier, coughing up blood as he convulses in Geralt’s arms. Always a poison Geralt doesn’t know, nothing he has an antidote to. He feels Jaskier’s grip on his shirt loosen, then go slack. Watches his eyes go glassy.

And Yen. She rushes towards him, full of urgency and fire, pursued by unseen enemies. It all goes wrong the moment she reaches him. As he takes her hand, she dissolves into ash, and he wakes choking.

Every morning, he claws his way back to consciousness. Every night, he hopes in vain that he will be exhausted enough to sleep dreamlessly.

To make matters worse, he fears that he’ll run out of food and coin well before he reaches the Temple. He can’t very well take on a contract in his current state, plus it would slow him down considerably. At least, he thinks bitterly, there’s no temptation to rent a room at an inn. Finances aside, sleeplessness and worry are making him short-tempered, greatly increasing the risk of meeting hostility in any populated place. So, the forest floor at night it is. Not that he would sleep any better in a feather bed.

Geralt realizes that while he has felt loneliness before, he has only rarely recognized it as such. As solitary as a witcher’s life is – was, until he met Jaskier – he knew nothing else, expected nothing else. Roach was company enough, and encounters with more humanoid others turned unpleasant as often as not. What was there for him to miss? Jaskier would surely say he was lonely before, but Geralt isn’t certain. He thinks he could quite easily have continued like that for another several decades.

But once Jaskier appeared to fill in the gap he didn’t know he was missing, Geralt sometimes felt his absence when they occasionally parted ways. It wasn’t being alone that he minded so much; it was that, somewhere along the way, Jaskier had ceased registering as a separate presence and became almost an extension of himself. Like Roach. Geralt had never expressed this thought aloud. He didn’t think Jaskier would appreciate being told that he no longer counted as a person.

This feeling now, though, is different, like the difference between the sharp pain of a clean break and the constant throbbing ache of a fatal infection. He has never felt so concerned for another’s life and so powerless to do anything about it at the same time. The feeling seeps into every moment of the day, waking or trying to sleep. Riding alone is unbearable. Hunting, eating, finding places to camp alone, unbearable. Even talking to Roach, his usual outlet, doesn’t help. He is well and truly miserable.

So miserable, in fact, that he doesn’t notice for several days that he’s been riding in circles. He’s no closer to the Temple of Melitele than he was when he decided, finally, to go. What’s more, he is entirely lost.

This, more than anything else, snaps him out of the mood he’s fallen into. He’s fulfilled a dozen contracts in these woods. He knows the paths, the direction he’s traveling, the nearby towns. There’s no reason he should be lost. Unless he’s been led into a trap.

He tugs on Roach’s reins to bring her to a stop and dismounts. His senses detect nothing out of the ordinary in the woods around him, but that means little if there’s magic involved. And it would take magic to muddle his senses this effectively.

For a moment, he feels relief. At least he isn’t going mad. But a trap means his fears are grounded, so the comfort is short-lived. He draws his sword. Steel, not silver, for he knows of no monster who could devise a trap complex enough to fool a witcher’s sense of direction. No, this could only be a mage’s doing.

“Show yourself,” he growls. He can detect nothing in the woods around him, but if there’s nothing there, he only risks looking an idiot in front of Roach.

 _Witcher_.

The voice, cold and precise, comes not from the trees but from inside his head. Another magic trick.

_I thought you would come for them. Quite unusual, a witcher taking on charges like a common bodyguard, but rather effective as bait in this case. You didn’t even require hard evidence. A few bad dreams were enough._

“Bait?” Geralt is surprised that the mage would reveal his intentions so quickly, but it only puts him more on edge.

_Yes, bait. Don’t tell me you haven’t already realized this is a trap. You witchers may be trained to rely on brute strength, but you must at least have some measure of intelligence._

“What do you want?”

 _You, obviously. Now, if you would be so kind as to continue in the direction you were already heading. We’ll see each other soon enough_.

Geralt feels the sorcerer’s presence leave his mind and snarls with frustration.

He’s aware that he has no reason to believe that Ciri, Yennefer, or Jaskier have actually been captured by this sorcerer who is clearly so gifted with the power of illusion. Possessing no powers of prophecy himself, he already knew magic the explanation for his dreams of late could be only someone else’s magic. He had hoped that someone had been Yennefer, or even Ciri—reaching out with magic as the only method of contacting him.

Yet he cannot leave – if he even knew the way out – knowing his friends might be in danger. Because of him, no less. If even one of them could be at risk, he must walk knowingly into this trap. This sorcerer’s power may well extend beyond illusions and dreams. He cannot take the smallest chance that he might be leaving Ciri, Yennefer, or Jaskier to his mercy.

Furious, he sheathes his sword and gets back on Roach. Now the woods around him no longer resemble the way to the temple, but although he does not recognize them, he somehow knows the way to go. He grits his teeth, imagining that he can feel the insidious touch of magic all around him.

The longer he travels, the stronger the feeling grows. Even Roach seems to sense it, balking at nothing and snorting when Geralt goads her forward. Eventually he has to resort to the Sign of Axii just to get her to keep moving. Smart horse, he thinks. Smarter than he is.

Just when he begins to worry that he’ll have to abandon her and set out on foot, a castle appears through the trees. Isolated here in the forest with no nearby settlements to protect, it seems more illusory than anything else he’s seen thus far, which only convinces him that it must be real after all. This mage, whoever he is, has already proven himself to be too skilled for shoddy illusions. Still, it seems to shimmer around the edges.

The gates are open, awaiting his entrance. He isn’t surprised when they slam shut behind him. To his right, he sees a stable, clearly fitted out for Roach.

Determined not to show any sign of dread, he takes his time unsaddling and brushing her. This small act of defiance is all he has in the face of an opponent who clearly has the upper hand. He only hopes that his friends aren’t in immediate danger, and that he would know, somehow, if they were being hurt.

When he can think of no other way to stall, he pats Roach on the shoulder and heads for the castle entrance.

Inside, the entry hall is deceptively warm and inviting. The walls are richly decorated, though the crest of arms is nothing he recognizes, and there is no obvious sign that this mage belongs to any sorcerers’ conclave. Geralt decides he might as well take advantage of the roaring fire and sits, making a show of propping his boots on the table in front of him.

“I’m here,” he says to the empty room, feeling foolish. “What do you want with me?”

He receives no reply, not even in the form of the touch of the mage’s mind.

Reaching out cautiously with his own thoughts, Geralt tries to contact Yennefer as she taught him to. He was never particularly good at it, though it occasionally worked at short distances.

_Yen? Are you here?_

Again, silence.

He waits uneasily and concentrates on his heightened hearing, letting his senses probe as far as they will reach. He can think of no way to alert Jaskier or Ciri, if indeed they are here.

When the silence breaks, it does so violently.

With a scream that could only be Ciri.

Geralt leaps to his feet, straining to pinpoint the sound even as his ears ring painfully.

“Ciri!”

The next scream is so piercing that he reflexively covers his ears. This does almost nothing to muffle the sound, which seems to echo inside his skull. He would be certain this is another of the sorcerer’s tricks if he had not himself once heard Ciri’s mother’s scream like that, in a voice laced with magic. No ordinary person could create such a sound. It would be no easy task to recreate as an illusion, either.

No easy task, but probably not impossible. He can imagine, as clearly as if she were standing next to him, Yennefer’s voice deriding him for falling for such an obvious trap. This mage has told him as much. His common sense tells him this rescue mission is futile.

And yet.

If Ciri, Yen, or Jaskier came to harm because of his inaction, he would never forgive himself.

Unable to identify the origin point of Ciri’s scream, he races out of the main hall and up the first staircase he sees, calling her name. Here, the halls are darkened, but it makes little difference to his enhanced sight. Drawing his sword, he heads down the first corridor he sees. He throws open one door, then another, but finds only empty chambers. Though not in disrepair, the castle seems to have been uninhabited for some time, a fact unsettling as it is mysterious.

Ciri screams a third time, this time without magic, and Geralt is finally able to locate her down another hall to his right. He races around the corner.

The door at the end of the hall is ajar, and though Ciri is out of view, he can see the shadow of her attacker, arms raised in the process of casting a spell.

Quicker than thought, Geralt rounds the corner and strikes.

The shadows – yet another illusion – vanish, though he does not see them.

He is focused instead on Ciri, gasping for breath at the end of his sword. The bloodstain spreading across her chest looks black, like some deadly flower.

He knows, even as his heart stops and he stands frozen in horror, that what he sees is not reality. This is Ciri as he first met her, wearing her blue cloak, her hair loose. Not as she is now, nearly grown and almost of his height.

“It seems witchers are not designed for rescue missions,” a voice says from behind him. “Even when they pretend to be knights. Killing is all your kind know. Is it the mutations, I wonder, or was it something about your nature even before? No matter, we shall soon find out.”

The illusion of Ciri vanishes, dissolving into ash like the image of Yennefer in his dreams. Even as he turns to face the sorcerer, his vision begins to blur, his legs folding under him.

“Really, Witcher. That was altogether too easy.”


	3. yennefer

Yennefer was dreaming. What’s more, she knew it, and although the dream was dark and tinged with malevolence, she concentrated on staying in it, paying attention rather than retreating back to wakefulness. Though she was no prophetess, like most sorceresses, her dreams sometimes had a ring of truth to them. She could sense that this was one of them.

In the dream, she was caged. Well, there were iron bars in front of her, at least. The rest of the world around her faded into blackness so complete that she could not make out a single other element of her surroundings.

Nothing, that is, until Geralt appeared on the other side of the bars.

His eyes were solid black and blank from the effects of a witcher’s potion. He should have been able to see in all but the most absolute darkness, but, curiously, he seemed not to notice her standing right in front of him. He was stalking something only he could sense in the darkness, nostrils flared, sword drawn. He seemed, somehow, very far away.

“Geralt.”

When he looked in her direction, his gaze went straight through her. He stalked towards the bars separating them, staring intently at something beyond her. She looked back, too, seeing nothing but black.

Geralt reached out towards the bars, testing for an opening or a point of weakness and finding them solid and immobile. His mouth tightened with frustration.

Standing no more than six inches away, Yennefer could see another emotion in his face as well, one that would be invisible to all but those who knew him as well as she did.

Geralt was afraid. Not for himself, she knew, but afraid all the same.

Yennefer reached up, perhaps to touch his hand through the bars. As she did, Geralt stiffened and opened his mouth to speak.

“Ciri?”

*

Yennefer wakes not with a start but slowly and deliberately, filing each detail of the dream away in her mind. After four nights in a row, she’s certain the dream means something. Dreams can be fickle, though, their meaning rarely as literal as it first appears. Without further information, her best guess is that Geralt has run into trouble of some kind during the course of his witcher duties. Dreams – her own or the dreams of others – are hardly her specialty, but the iron bars suggest some great distance or barrier between them, and Geralt’s black eyes hint at something to do with a monster. This also has the advantage of being the simplest explanation.

Ciri’s presence in the dream, however, complicates things. And worries her.

Yennefer shakes her head to clear it, vowing to put the whole thing out of her mind until she’s properly awake and can think of something useful to do about it. In the meantime, she has other work to do: orders of potions to fill, spells to construct, and the like. Not to mention that she ought to get to the market before it fills with noonday crowds.

The knock at the door surprises her; it’s early yet. She opens it to find a middle-aged man clutching his hat in his hands.

“My lady, I was told a sorceress lives here—”

“Do you seek a cure for blindness, or are you merely illiterate?” she asks sharply.

“Miss?”

Yennefer stares pointedly at the “Closed” sign affixed next to the door. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Miss, please, it’s urgent.”

Yennefer sighs. “In what way?”

“It’s my son. He’s been cursed. He’s become vicious, monstrous. He doesn’t recognize it. He can’t tell us who did it, and my wife and I have no more idea what’s become of him than the family dog or the chickens do.”

“Monstrous, you say? You need a witcher then, not a sorceress. If you find one and need a cure brewed, come back tomorrow, or some other time when I’m available.”

“But that’s just the problem. We can’t get a witcher.”

Yennefer raises an eyebrow. “If you can’t afford a witcher, what makes you think you can afford me?”

“It’s not a matter of coin, my lady…Do you mean you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what? Quickly, as you’re wasting my time.”

“It’s the alderman. He’s ordered all witchers out of the city months ago. No one knows why, especially since they’ve had all that trouble with leshies on the edge of town. Some tried to talk reason to him, but he was unmoved.”

Her interest piqued, Yennefer opens the door a bit wider. “So our alderman distrusts magic, despite his and the whole city’s reliance on it.”

“Not magic. Only witchers. Mages and sorceresses – like yourself, miss – are free to stay.”

“Is that so,” Yennefer muses. “How generous of him. Very well. Take me to your son. I can’t say that you won’t still need a witcher when this is all said and done, but I’ll have a look. In the meantime, I would like to hear everything you know about this alderman.”

“I don’t know much, but I’ll tell you what I can.” The man seems eager to be off, as though Yennefer will change her mind at any moment. “Thank you for helping me, despite your shop bein’ closed. It’s much appreciated,” he adds.

Yennefer shrugs. “Let us go, then.”

As she follows the man to his home – a farm on the edge of town, a fair walk from her centrally located shop and lodgings, he must truly be concerned for his son – he explains the alderman’s sudden expulsion of witchers.

The village where she’s set up shop, it seems, was once a sort of perfect breeding ground for monsters of all sorts: large enough a town to serve the needs of creatures that like to live among humans, such as vampires and the like, and small enough to be at risk from the wilderness, where more solitary creatures like leshens waited. As such, hardly a week went by without at least one witcher in town with a contract, and often there were two or three.

The law of supply and demand, however, decrees that the more witchers there are active in a region, the fewer monsters there are. And so it was that the region’s supply of lucrative witcher contracts dwindled.

A year or so ago, the man tells her, a witcher had been accused of cheating his clients to hire him under false pretenses. Taking contracts for monsters only common thieves or bad luck were responsible, and so on. He had even, it was believed, gone so far as to kill a girl from the village, making it look as though a werewolf had done it. When the witcher could provide no evidence of a werewolf, he was driven out of town. The farmer would not say his name, but the witcher’s description matched no one Yennefer knew. She had heard many similar stories from Geralt, however – some in which the witcher was at fault, and many in which they were not.

“This is when the alderman banned witchers entirely?”

The farmer shakes his head. “The alderman is no fool. His own father was taken by wraiths, oh, half a dozen years back. He knew the dangers of lettin’ monsters roam freely. The risk might’ve been less than it was once, but no one was ready to get rid of witchers entirely.”

“What changed his mind, then?”

“Scarcely a month later, this sorcerer appeared in town. Didn’t set up shop like you, just showed up one day and claimed he had urgent business with the alderman. The next day, the alderman announces that witchers are hereby banned without a word of explanation. Most were inclined to agree with him, ‘specially the family of the girl who was killed.”

“I see,” Yennefer says, wondering whether she knows of this sorcerer.

At last, the dirt track they’ve been following ends at a stone cottage, the kind of property that, while certainly not to Yennefer’s tastes, speaks to generations of at least reasonably successful farmers. There’s a small stable, meaning this man has enough money for one horse, perhaps more, and even a well. No one looking at the place would guess one of its inhabitants was cursed.

Yennefer hesitates momentarily as they approach the door. Her reluctance to take on a witcher’s duties is not merely because they pay badly or tend to dirty one’s hands. No matter how powerful a sorceress she might be, none of her spells were designed specifically to deal with monsters, nor did her training ever address any such situation. Still, she is curious to see what this curse entailed. It would be something indeed to tell Geralt she had fulfilled what should have been a witcher’s contract.

Once she manages to find him.

“Is your son here?”

The man’s eyes flicker to her and then back to the cottage. “Not in the house. There’s a shed on the edge of the fields. We put him there when—when the curse turned him violent.” He shrugs somewhat sheepishly. “It’s not so bad as it sounds. He doesn’t seem to know the difference.”

“Shall we go, then?”

“I thought you might like to speak to my wife, seeing as how she’s the one who’s been caring for him, mostly.”

“Very well.”

The farmer’s wife is a slight but sinewy woman with sharp black eyes.

“You are the sorceress?”

“I am. Your husband tells me you have a curse to be lifted.”

“Yes. Our son.”

“How do you know your son is cursed, and not merely mad?” Yennefer asks bluntly.

“I know my son,” the woman says simply. “This is no madness.”

“Very well,” Yennefer replies. She sits at the head of the kitchen’s fine wooden table and folds her hands. “Tell me everything. Start from the beginning – when did the curse appear? What are its symptoms, exactly? Who might have cause to curse your son?”

“He began to act strangely four days ago. Two days later, he was entirely not himself. By the evening, he grew violent, and we had to lock him in the shed, for he no longer recognized us – it was as though he was possessed by a wild animal.”

Yennefer nods, familiar with several curses that could erase a person’s humanity to a greater or lesser degree, making them seem purely beastly.

“And have you any idea who might have done this?”

The woman shakes her head. “None. We have no enemies.”

Yennefer raises an eyebrow. “And your son? He has no rival? No jealous friends? No lovers?”

At the last bit, the farmer and his wife exchange a glance.

“Well—”

“Ah. So you do have some idea.”

The farmer looked over at Yennefer helplessly. “He’s betrothed to a tailor’s daughter in town, but we know of no reason—”

“Sons are often reluctant to inform their parents of their misdoings,” Yennefer says dryly.

“Misdoings? What can you mean?”

The farmer’s wife shoots him a sharp glance. “Ach, Branden, you know well what she means.”

Yennefer crosses her arms. “I have seen it often enough, in various forms. Take me to him. I have a strong suspicion as to the nature of the curse, but I must confirm it with my own eyes.”

The farmer and his wife lead her to the shed on the edges of their fields, standing well back from the door.

“You don’t intend to…let him out, do you?” the woman asks.

“Certainly not. However, this spell requires close proximity.”

Yennefer twists her hands in front of her, calling up the required Elder words. She limits her search to the types of curses a vengeful tailor’s daughter might be able to get her hands on, and her suspicions are quickly confirmed.

“As I thought. Your son has been cursed with a spell that reveals the cursed one’s true nature – at least, their nature in the eyes of the caster. The good news, for you, is that it can be reversed. The bad news is it requires physical contact with the cursed one to take effect. You will need a witcher after all, which is fortunate for you, actually, since given the nature of your son’s behavior I am not inclined to reverse the spell myself even if I could.”

“But there are no witchers here,” the farmer repeats.

“There may be sooner than you think, once I speak to the alderman. I can be quite convincing.” Yennefer turns back to the cottage. “Come with me and I will teach you the counterspell. You’ll need to remember the words. We can negotiate the price for my help and diagnosis in the house.”

*

After collecting her payment, Yennefer returns home, still contemplating what she has learned from the farmer and his wife. The coincidence of her recurring dream and the alderman’s banishment of witchers is interesting, too interesting to ignore entirely, but she is far from certain that there is any connection between them. Politicians get strange ideas in their heads about mages, witchers, and nonhumans all too often, in her experience. That a sorcerer might have convinced the alderman to turn against witchers, though, is interesting. In any case, she is convinced that neither her dreams nor the appearance of this sorcerer portend anything good. She needs to hear from Geralt. Face to face.

Most recently, she had heard rumors that he was somewhere in Temeria, leagues and leagues away from this alderman’s jurisdiction. That had been several days ago, though, and rumors could mislead as easily as dreams.

Geralt’s last letter, sent nearly three weeks back, had been mailed from Carreras. By now, she thinks he has likely moved on. To Vizima, maybe, or Dorndal, if he has not left Temeria entirely. Assuming he stopped in a town at all.

 _Dorndal_ , she decides, operating on instinct alone. She finds her feelings to be generally correct. And she can’t be too frustrated by Geralt’s elusiveness, given her own tendency to disappear when she wants to.

*

It had been raining for days in Dorndal, and as luck would have it, her portal drops her straight onto a dirt path trampled into muck. Hardly an auspicious beginning to her search. Sighing, she magicks her boots clean and waterproof and started walking towards the village center, looking for an inn in which Geralt would be likely to stay or search for contracts.

The first place she finds is an establishment that has seen better days – not a place she would ever seek lodging, but exactly the sort of place Geralt would. He is predictable, after all, if inexplicable.

She enters the inn and taps a coin on the bar.

“An ale, if you please. Something dark. Not the swill you serve to goat herders.”

The barkeep raises an eyebrow but takes her coin without a word. She returns with something that at least resembles a respectable beer.

“I’m looking for a witcher that may have passed through here recently,” she says. “White hair. Wolf medallion. Sound familiar?”

The girl shrugs. “Aye, perhaps.”

Yennefer scowls. “That coin was more than enough to pay for three ales. Don’t make me ask again.” She takes a sip of beer, disappointed to find it all but flavorless. At least it doesn’t taste like horse piss, which probably means it passes for a luxury in this place.

“He passed through, aye. Didn’t stay here, though. Try the Copper Eel down the road.”

“Was that so difficult?”

She drains the rest of her ale. No point in letting it go to waste.

“You’re not the first to ask, you know. What do you mages want with a witcher?”

She nearly spits out her drink.

“What did you just say?”

The barkeep smirks, knowing she’s gotten Yennefer’s attention. “There was another sorcerer here last week. Expensive clothes, humming with magic just like you. Askin’ after the witcher.”

“What did he look like?”

“Don’t remember. Hard to look directly at him, like. And he kept his hood up.”

“A glamour?” Yennefer asks, mostly thinking aloud. She dislikes this immensely. She can think of no good reasons why a sorcerer would be trailing Geralt.

The girl shrugs. Yennefer slams another coin on the bar and turns to go towards the Copper Eel.

Two hours later, after another mediocre ale and many more conversations with various innkeepers than she ever cared to have, all Yennefer knows is that Geralt had been through Dorndal recently, but he hadn’t stayed or taken on any contracts. No one could even tell her precisely when he had been here. One innkeep insisted it had been a week to the day, another thought ten days ago, when the moon was new. And, of course, no one knew where he had been going. No one else could offer anything more substantial about the mysterious sorcerer, either.

Irritated, troubled, muddy, and tired, she opens a portal back to her shop in Kovir. Concerning as the situation has become, she doesn’t see the sense in running off to play adventurer. She needs more information.

There is a letter waiting for her when she returns. A letter addressed in Ciri’s handwriting. Frowning, Yennefer rips open the envelope.

_**Dear Yennefer,** _

_**Don’t laugh, all right? It was Nenneke’s idea to write to you.** _

_**Lately I’ve been having these dreams. They’re probably just dreams, but Nenneke said I should write to you anyway, in case they’re important. I said that they’re probably caused by indigestion from the stuff they serve us at dinner, like as anything else. Now I’ve got kitchen duties three times a week on top of my usual chores.** _

_**Anyway, the dreams involve you and Geralt. It’s the same dream every night: It’s dark, pitch dark, and there are these iron bars between the two of you. You’re trying to speak to Geralt, but he can’t see or hear you. Neither of you seem to be able to hear me, either, even though I’m standing right behind you. Then I wake up, gasping like a gutted fish.** _

_**I’m sure you’re busy with sorceress things, but Nenneke thought it was important to tell you. I’d write more, but I have to go scrub the kitchen floors.** _

_**Love,** _

_**Your daughter, Ciri** _

Yennefer puts the letter down, the back of her neck prickling with unease. She’s never known Ciri to have any more aptitude for oneiromancy than she does, but the two of them having the same dream nightly is about the clearest sign of clairvoyance that a mage could ask for. Actually, Ciri’s dreams make somewhat more sense than her own, seeing as she and Geralt are bonded through the Law of Surprise. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Yennefer needs to speak with Ciri in person. First, though, she must see about this other mage, and that means going to the alderman.

*

It is a relatively short walk to the alderman’s house. Though it’s well into evening, he appears to be out; the door is locked, the lights extinguished. Fortunately, Yennefer thinks, shifting the mechanism of a lock with magic is no more difficult than raising a stone from the ground. She lights the candles on the kitchen table with a flick of her fingers and sits down to wait.

Just as she is beginning to grow impatient, the door swings open.

“Who’s there?”

Yennefer stands and shakes out the wrinkles from her skirt. “Fear not,” she says dryly. “I’m haven’t come to rob or murder you.”

“Then what do you want?” the alderman asks, stepping into the light of the candles. “Why are you here?”

He is a slight man, no taller than Yennefer is. The grey in his short hair and trim beard place him over forty. His aloof expression suggests an air of seriousness that she guesses he cultivates intentionally.

“To talk,” she replies.

“What about? I’m not inclined to speak with strange women who break into my home.”

“As it happens, I’m not typically in the business of breaking into peoples’ homes. These, however, are not typical circumstances.”

“Do you suppose that gives you the right to pick my locks and lurk in my kitchen?”

She ignores him. “I’m told you’re responsible for the banishment of witchers in this city. I hear that this was done at the request of a mage who visited you last year. I need information on this man.”

He stares at her coldly.

“I dislike chaos,” he says after a long moment. “My job as alderman is to bring order to this city. This, alone, is the reason I banned witchers within town limits.”

“Letting monsters roam freely falls under your definition of order, does it?”

The alderman raises an eyebrow. “Am I to replace them with sentient killers instead? I think not. Ones who cheat my citizens as well as murdering them.”

“And so you judge all witchers by the one.”

“I did not realize there were mages so sympathetic to witchers, in addition to those so hostile to them.”

Yennefer draws her shoulders back, lifting her chin. “I did not say I was a sorceress.”

“No one but a witch would seek out another mage so boldly. Besides, I make it my business to know who comes and goes in my city. Particularly if they set up shop in the center of town.”

“This grows tiresome. The mage who was here a year ago, the one evidently so hostile to witchers, tell me about him. Before I lose my patience.”

“Ireneus var Steingard.” The alderman speaks quickly, his words clipped with annoyance. “He feels that we have no right to disrupt the balance between humans and monsters, any more than we have the right to meddle in natural disasters. Or, more accurately, he believes that only mages such as himself should have that right. The fact that he arrived shortly before the murder of an innocent girl by a witcher is coincidence, no more. He left soon after the incident. I know nothing more, nor do I want to. He seemed a thoroughly unpleasant fellow and made no secret of his distaste for witchers, and I was as glad to see him gone as I was them. As I will be glad to see you leave when this conversation is over.”

“Rejoice, then,” Yennefer says. She opens a portal behind her, savoring the alderman’s momentary lack of composure at the sudden roar and flash of light filling his kitchen. She looks over her shoulder as she steps into the portal.

“I’m going.”

*

She steps out of the portal into her own kitchen, breathing heavily—but more from anger than exertion. She forces herself to unclench her teeth and relax her shoulders. It’s late. She needs to rest and prepare before rushing off to question Ciri about her dreams, much less charging off to find Geralt.

And find Geralt she must, for she has heard the name Ireneus var Steingard before.

In all the schools and courts of the Continent, there were many mages who thought of witchers as a mistake, an unfortunate relic of wilder, less civilized times. Many who thought the magical community had gone too far in its experiments with genetics and hormones and mutagens. A whole range of mages who believed that the creation of witchers was unethical, that it was no longer necessary, that it was simply vaguely distasteful.

But none who were so obsessed as Ireneus var Steingard. He was known to speak of witchers as other scholars spoke of the plague – a mysterious, deadly force that must be understood, contained, eliminated.

She paces her rooms, picking things up and setting them down again at random. What Ireneus wants with Geralt, she does not know. Does he aim simply to kill him? She almost hopes so, for at least Geralt has fair a chance of besting him. To torture him? To experiment on him?

She throws the object in her hand at the nearest wall. It happens to be a glass bottle, which shatters with a satisfying crash, sending shards flying and staining the corner dark with wine. She stares at the mess, chest heaving, hands fisted in her hair. Then she picks up another glass. Another, then another, until all the glassware at hand is in pieces on the floor.

Finally, exhausted to the core and fearful for Geralt, she sinks onto her bed, still fully dressed.

Sleep does not come easy, and when it does it is full of darkness and iron bars.


	4. a rescue mission

The sun is already at its peak in the sky when she wakes. For a long time, she looks up at the ceiling, thinking about how to find Ireneus and what to do with him when she does. Then she forces herself to stand, clean up the wine and broken glass – with a spell, obviously – change her clothes, eat something, and pack a bag. Not knowing what to expect, she takes everything lightweight that could conceivably be of use. Then she opens a portal to the Temple of Melitele.

She lands outside the temple gates and is immediately struck by a wave of nausea brought on by overexertion. Doubling over, she vomits what remains of her lunch into the bushes. The spell was difficult, the distance was much farther than she would usually travel by teleportation, but time is of the essence. She spits, wipes her mouth, and sets off for the temple complex.

She hasn’t gone a hundred paces when a familiar voice calls her name. Yennefer looks to her right to see a slender ashen-haired figure sprinting in her direction. Yennefer knows there’s no blood relationship, but she can’t help but see a resemblance to Geralt. He would say it’s only due to her witcher training, habits and mannerisms picked up at Kaer Morhen, but it’s more than that. Her light hair, the scar below her eye, something in her expression – they all remind Yennefer of him.

“Ciri!”

Then, of course, there are the qualities that are all Ciri. The girl runs forward, meeting her halfway and nearly knocking her over with the force of her embrace.

“Yennefer! You got my letter! I didn’t know whether you’d come.”

“You got my attention,” Yennefer says. She steps back, her hands on Ciri’s shoulders, which are higher than hers now. “Look at you. Practically of age. You can’t possibly have grown this much since I saw you last.”

Ciri tilts her head in a gesture she’s almost certainly learned from Geralt and smirks. “Not all of us can be ageless witchers or sorceresses. Some of us actually experience the passage of time.”

“Don’t start.” But Yennefer finds she can’t sustain her usual prickliness. “It’s good to see you, my daughter.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” The smile fades slightly from Ciri’s face. “Have you heard from Geralt?”

“No.” The question runs through Yennefer like a shot of ice water in her veins. “But I have some idea of where he might be.”

“You do?”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high. It’s nowhere good.”

The corner of Ciri’s mouth turns down. “Well, it’s Geralt.”

“Yes. That it is. And though I can’t swear to his health or safety, I have a feeling these dreams you’ve been having mean he’s alive, at the very least.” _He must be_ , she thinks.

“I hope you’re not just saying that.”

Yennefer clicks her tongue. “I would never soften the truth just to make you feel better. You know that.”

Ciri’s shoulders relax. “That’s true. When are we leaving, then?”

“ _We’re_ not leaving for anywhere.”

Ciri looks at her sideways, eyebrows furrowed. “You are going to look for him, aren’t you?”

“I intend to, yes. But I won’t put you at risk. It will be too dangerous and well beyond your magical training, regardless of your gifts.”

“Of course I’m going with you. Don’t try and stop me.” Ciri crosses her arms, bristling like an angry cat.

“With all respect to your considerable abilities, Ciri, it’s not a matter of me _trying_ to stop you. You’re not coming with me, and that is that.”

“Then why even come here?!”

“To hear more about these dreams, as well as any other premonitions or signs you might have had. Directly from you, not in a letter. I’ll need as much information as I can get, where I’m going.”

“And where is that?”

Yennefer smiles. “You won’t fool me so easily, Ciri. I know that you want to help. This is how you can help me. Let’s go inside and at least be comfortable while we argue, shall we?”

Ciri shoots her a glare and stalks back towards the temple, as sullen as she was in the worst of her twelve-year-old moods.

Nenneke is waiting for them just inside, looking the same as ever despite the years that have passed since Yennefer last saw her. She inclines her head in the sorceress’s direction.

“Yennefer.”

“Mother Nenneke.”

“It’s just Nenneke, as you well know.”

“Indeed. I’m on my best behavior, that’s all.”

“I don’t doubt you’re out of practice.” Nenneke’s smirk is almost invisible, but after spending time with Geralt, Yennefer finds her practically effusive. She and the priestess had not always seen eye-to-eye – well, Yennefer rarely sees eye-to-eye with any priestess – but after so many years they had come to a certain level of respect. Not to mention their mutual concern for a certain Witcher and his Child Surprise.

Turning her attention towards Ciri, Nenneke says, “You’d best get going. Just because Yennefer is here doesn’t mean you’re excused from your chores.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Ciri mutters. She saves her withering glare, tossed over her shoulder as she stalks down the hallway, for Yennefer. “I’ll be in the kitchens. As usual.”

“Hmm!” Nenneke snorts, looking back at Yennefer. “I can see the resemblance.”

“To Queen Calanthe?” Yennefer replies innocently. “Yes, I’ve heard she could be similarly stubborn.”

“I’m sure,” Nenneke says drily. “Ciri’s told you about her dreams, then? I feared they were more than just dreams.”

“Yes. You were right, though what exactly they mean I don’t yet know. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Geralt.”

Nenneke shakes her head.

“I thought not.”

“Would I also be correct in thinking you have some idea of where he is?”

“You would be,” Yennefer replies. “But first I need to speak to Ciri. After her chores are complete, of course.”

Nenneke smirks. “That may be a task best left until morning. Come, I’ll take you to your room.”

*

As it turns out, Yennefer doesn’t have to wait all the way until morning to talk to Ciri. Instead, Ciri turns up at her door just as Yennefer is preparing for bed, looking sullen and smelling strongly of soap suds. Though Yennefer has never visited Kaer Morhen herself, she has a sudden strong image of Ciri at twelve, worn out and irritable from a day of Vesemir putting her through her paces.

Ciri stalks in and flops down in the chair Yennefer has just vacated. “Just so you know, if you leave me here and go to look for Geralt yourself, I will follow you. Then, instead of knowing I’m with you, you’ll just have both me and Geralt to worry about.”

Yennefer raises an eyebrow. “Did you come here just to tell me that?”

“No. I figured if you’re going to ask me about my dream, you’d have a thousand exhaustive questions and it would take all night. I might as well sleep here.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I’m curious to see what the effects of our physical proximity will be on our dreams.”

Ciri sits bolt upright, gripping the arms of the chair. “Our dreams? You mean you’ve had the dream too?”

Yennefer nods. “Almost identical to yours, and for the same number of nights. I have yet to see you in my dreams, though.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know yet. Trouble, I think. More than the usual sort.”

Ciri sits back again. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having the same dreams as me?”

Yennefer almost smiles. “As I recall, our conversation earlier ended rather abruptly. Also, I wanted to hear more about your dreams without any influence from mine.”

“You said your dreams were almost identical,” Ciri says, frowning. “What’s different?”

“In my dreams, Geralt seems to think it’s _you_ who is in danger. All the more reason not to take you with me straight into the heart of danger.”

Ciri snorts. “And that’s new?”

“No. But I fear this – whatever this is – could be a trap for you as well as Geralt.”

“You think Geralt is trapped?”

Yennefer nods. “Yes. By a sorcerer known for his particular dislike of witchers. And by extension—” she shoots Ciri a glance, “—those trained as witchers. Whether they’ve been through the Changes or not.”

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense. If this is a trap for me and Geralt, why are you having these dreams too?”

“It could be a trap for all of us,” Yennefer points out.

“In that case, better to stick together.”

“Not necessarily.”

Ciri growls in frustration, a sound so reminiscent of Geralt that Yennefer almost laughs. This time, her smile slips through.

Immediately, Ciri sits up straighter. “Is that a yes? You’ll let me come with you?”

Yennefer makes a long show of rolling her eyes.

“Yes. All right. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow and I’ll explain what I know on the way. But only because you’ll drive Nenneke up the wall otherwise, and she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

Ciri leans back and smirks, satisfied. “I knew you’d agree eventually.”

Yennefer tosses a pillow at her, which she catches with ease.

“Don’t look so smug, or I’ll teleport out before you wake up.”

“Ha! I’d like to see you wake up before I do.”

“Go to bed, Ciri.”

Still smirking, Ciri curls up on the bed next to her, hugging the pillow to her chest. Yennefer finishes removing her earrings and makeup and then lies down beside her.

“Yennefer?”

“Ciri.”

“Geralt’s really in trouble, isn’t he?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And this mage—he’s really so dangerous?”

“I fear he is. But we will find him. And then Ireneus var Steingard will have to face us both.”

*

They make their way to Ellander proper early the next morning – well, early by Yennefer’s standards. Ciri is chomping at the bit.

“Geralt’s in _danger_. You said so yourself.”

“Yes, and all the more reason for us to be prepared before walking directly into whatever he’s tangled up in.” Yennefer doesn’t mention how much the portal yesterday demanded of her.

“It’s practically noon!”

“A matter of hours won’t make much difference to Geralt, but they might make all the difference for us. We have very little idea what we’re walking into.” She and Ciri both had traveling cloaks, but after her adventure in Dorndal she needed new – _waterproof_ – shoes. And they both needed provisions, even if Yennefer fully intended to make use of portals rather than horses, to Ciri’s disappointment.

She pays for their supplies and steps out into the street, glancing about for the best place to open a portal. The last she knew, Ireneus lived rather like herself, operating outside any royal courts or magical covens. Unlike her, however, he chose not to ply his skills, instead taking up residence in some suitably sinister castle to work at his experiments. With a bit of luck and some well-crafted spells, she thinks she might be able to locate it. And hopefully whatever binds hers and Ciri’s fate to Geralt will do the rest.

From behind her, a voice cries, “Well, now. It can’t be Yennefer of Vengerberg!”

She turns on her heel and sees a very familiar face, which is quickly obscured by Ciri’s bear hug.

“Jaskier!” Ciri shrieks, “What are you doing here!?”

“Just on the road, as usual. You know how it is – a bard’s work is never done. It’s a hard life, but someone must bear it, et cetera. Speaking of which, you two look like you’re setting out on some kind of adventure. I can see I’ve missed some excitement. And Ciri, aren’t you supposed to be in school these days? Where’s Geralt?”

Yennefer shoots Ciri a sharp glance before she can say anything in response to the bard’s questions.

“It’s good to see you too, Jaskier. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed. we’re in a hurry. If you’ll excuse us.”

“Oh, _now_ we’re in a hurry,” Ciri grumbles.

“Surely you can spare a moment, Yennefer,” Jaskier says, stepping quickly in front of her before she can stride away. His expression turns a fraction more serious. “For an old friend?”

Yennefer doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t smite him with magic either. He takes this as an invitation to keep talking.

“I haven’t heard from Geralt in months, not even a rumor, much less whispers worthy of a ballad. Now I see the two of you leaving town in a rush. It doesn’t take a professor of Oxenfurt to guess what’s going on, although of course I am one.” Jaskier shoots a grin at Ciri, but his eyes remain worried.

“Do enlighten us as to your theory,” Yennefer says, knowing that Jaskier will anyway.

“Geralt’s in trouble of some kind, and you’re going to rescue him. Tell me I’m wrong, I’d be glad to hear it.”

Yennefer would deny it were she talking to anyone else, but she knows Jaskier has a remarkable intuition and a remarkably irritating tendency to persist until he gets a truthful answer. “Very astute,” she sighs. “And, as you can imagine, where we’re going is no place for a bard. Come on, Ciri, we’re off.”

“Now wait a moment,” Jaskier said, backpedaling to stay ahead of her. “Bard I may be, but I’ve followed Geralt to the ends of the world. I won’t get in your way, and I’m hardly a liability. Who knows, I might even turn out to be useful.”

Yennefer stops again and looks him in the eye. “You haven’t got magic, and you’ll need it where we’re going.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Ciri says, crossing her arms and adopting a look of sheer stubbornness, which she has perfected over the years.

“Jaskier’s been all over the Continent with Geralt. He’s proven himself, and _we’ve_ got magic. Isn’t it better to stick together?”

Jaskier bows slightly in her direction.

“Thank you, Ciri, for the vote of confidence.”

“This isn’t one of Geralt’s hunting trips where you can wait outside the cave while he slays the monster. This is a rescue mission. It will be dangerous enough with two of us, let alone adding a third who can’t hold a sword or do magic. I don’t say this to wound you, Jaskier, it’s the truth.”

Jaskier’s expression turns serious, as though he’s flicked some internal switch.

“I know. At least, I know you believe it is. And while I appreciate your concern for my safety, Geralt has rescued me countless times. I want to return the favor. I’d like to help.”

“Touching. How exactly will you getting killed help him?”

“Please, Yennefer,” Ciri adds. “Surely three heads is better than two?”

“I can’t stop you. And I haven’t time to talk sense into you,” Yennefer grumbles. “On your own head be it. We’re wasting time.”

Ciri and Jaskier grin identically.

“Let’s go!” Ciri says, already crossing the street. “There’s fields this way, space for you to open a portal.”

“You already know where to find him?” Jaskier asks. “Well done. What a team we make.”

Annoyed, and certain this will end poorly, Yennefer shakes her head and follows Ciri.

It’s a good thing, she thinks, that they won’t have to portal halfway across the Continent. Transporting three people is a lot more tiring than just transporting herself, and even that can be dangerous if the distance is long enough. Teleporting three will drain her, and she doesn’t like the thought of arriving at less than full strength.

“Ciri, you first. Then Jaskier. I’ll follow right behind you and close the portal.”

With a nod, Ciri loosens her sword in its scabbard.

“Ready.”

Closing her eyes in concentration, Yennefer reaches into Chaos and opens the way for them. She looks up just in time to see Ciri disappear through the portal. Jaskier steps up after her, giving Yennefer a quick nod of thanks before following her.

Yennefer gathers herself and steps through last, closing the portal behind herself like a needle pulling thread.

She arrives in the midst of a different sort of chaos. Ciri is frozen in the act of drawing her sword, immobilized except for her eyes and mouth, which is spitting curses. Yennefer, too, feels the tug of restraining magic, but she is a far more experienced sorceress than Ciri and better prepared to resist it. She spins around, looking for Jaskier.

“Yen—”

“Jaskier!”

At first, she thinks her portal hasn’t closed as it should have. But no, this is a different portal, and it is closing even as she rushes toward it. Closing, and taking Jaskier with it.

He claws at the air but finds no purchase as the spell which inconveniences Yennefer and immobilizes Ciri drags him backwards. He only has time to scream once before he disappears from sight and the portal vanishes, leaving nothing behind.

“No,” she growls, stretching her hand out to catch it, but all she ends up with is a fistful of dirt and a mouthful of grass as she tumbles forward. “No!”

She pushes herself up to her hands and knees and screams in frustration, ripping up a handful of weeds.

Behind her, Ciri pulls herself free of the binding magic and also topples over, her feet the last to wake up from the spell. She scrambles back to her feet and over to Yennefer.

“What happened?” she pants. “Can you trace the portal? We’ve got to find him.” She looks around wildly, as if Jaskier might have been teleported only just past the tree line.

“No need.” Yennefer sits back on her heels and spits out the last of the dirt. “He’s been taken to the same place Geralt is, I’m certain of it. We’ll find them both there, along with the sorcerer who did this.”


	5. unmaking a witcher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Medical torture in canon Witcher style, a moment of internalized ableism on Geralt's part

Geralt comes to in a cell bare of any furniture, even a wooden bench. The castle dungeons, from what he can tell from his limited perspective, are as typical as dungeons can be – stone walls, cold drafts, iron bars. The floor is certainly made of stone as well, which does nothing good for his back and joints. Other than a slight stiffness, though, he feels no particular distress, not even a headache from being magically knocked unconscious. Only disoriented, with a lingering sense that something – aside from his imprisonment – is terribly wrong.

Ciri.

A jolt of horror hits him so strongly that it might as well have been a physical blow. The memory of her expression, terror and betrayal as she looked up from the sword that impaled her and met his eyes, makes his blood run cold. For a moment, he reaches out in a panic as though she might be bleeding out on the floor next to him.

But of course she isn’t, and the memory dissolves into dust the same as the illusion did.

The darkness around him is nearly, but not entirely, absolute. His eyes tell him that he is alone in his cell. If he can see that much, then there is light, no matter how distant its source, and beyond that, escape. His enhanced senses of hearing and smell likewise tell him there is no one else in any of the cells nearby. That isn’t enough, however, to reassure him of Ciri’s safety – or of Yennefer’s and Jaskier’s, for that matter.

He sits up slowly, surprised to find that he is, in fact, completely unharmed. The sorcerer had admitted outright that his goal was to trap Geralt, but for the moment he seemed content with imprisoning him and nothing more. Geralt supposes he will find out the rest sooner or later. Yet it unsettles him that the mage should know who he is, and worse that he should know about Ciri. Illusions or not, the very fact that this mage knows of her existence and of Geralt’s connection to her is reason enough for concern.

He stands and walks the few paces what seems to be the door – the cell is not large. As expected, the bars are unyielding even to his preternatural strength. Neither are there any discernable weaknesses in the stone walls. No matter. He will have to be somewhat cleverer about his escape, then.

Perhaps Ciri is the mage’s true goal, not him. The panic he felt at Ciri’s death rises in his chest all over again, and he curses his foolishness. What reason would a sorcerer have to imprison a witcher, especially when a Source who also happens to be the heir of Cintra is at stake? Geralt’s desire to play the hero may spell doom for his Child Surprise.

“Who are you? Tell me what you want with me,” he snarls at the empty corridor. He only half expects an answer. The sorcerer might be questioning Ciri about her power and bloodline this very moment.

A voice echoes through the darkness, coming at once from everywhere and from nowhere in particular, just as it had immediately before he blacked out.

 _All in due time, Witcher_.

“Why am I here?”

_Hmm. The rat in the cage seeks to question the researcher. For now, let it suffice to say I have been interested in meeting you for some time now. Our face to face meeting, however, will have to wait. Until then, Witcher._

“If she comes to harm, I will kill you.”

No answer is forthcoming. So it’s to be more mind tricks, then. Geralt sits back down to wait. 

The hours stretch on. He stands twice to stretch out his cramping muscles and dispel the creeping chill from his bones. He shouts himself hoarse but elicits no further response from the sorcerer. He sleeps, first in short stints, then in periods that might be as long as a full night.

Though he tries to keep track of the passing time, it’s nearly impossible to tell without light to help him distinguish the days from the nights. He hears nothing and sees no one. He has only his hunger to gauge by, and it is an unreliable meter. His metabolism is several times faster than a normal man’s, yet he can go for long stretches without eating if necessary – another benefit of his witcher’s mutations. And he’s not exactly expending much energy languishing in a cell. His only concern is for Ciri. Has the sorcerer found her and decided he has no use for Geralt anymore? He supposes that dying of thirst in a freezing cellar isn’t the worst way a witcher has met his end, but fear for Ciri drives him to keep searching for a weak point in the walls and the door.

Geralt has endured far worse conditions than these, but the cell quickly begins to wear on him. His back aches from sleeping on the unyielding stone. His muscles are sore from shivering in the constant cold. Most of all, he’s continually exhausted, as though he’s been battling monsters day after day instead of sitting and pacing.

Eventually – at least three days later, perhaps as many as five – he awakens to find a bowl of food just inside the door of his cell. He has no idea whether the mage delivered it himself or simply portaled it in from somewhere. “Food” is as specific as his analysis gets. It might contain meat, or maybe it was just in the vicinity of meat at some point. He eats it too quickly to tell, not that it would have been worth the time had he paid more attention to it.

He feels slightly more alert then, though he has no more of a plan for escape than before he went to sleep. He paces the cell again, testing the door he knows is locked and the iron bars he knows are immovable. He runs his fingers over every inch of the stone walls he can reach, searching for cracks and finding none.

After a while, it seems the cell is getting brighter, though there is no still no light source Geralt can detect. Strange. His eyes should have adjusted long before now. But no one approaches with a torch, and nothing moves beyond the bars.

The burst of energy fades all too quickly, leaving him exhausted and as frustrated as before. He leans his head back against the stone wall and goes back to waiting for the sounds of approaching footsteps.

The cycle repeats over and over again. He waits in darkness and silence, growing ever more desperate and despairing. Just when he thinks he can’t bear another second of this monotony – or of worrying about Ciri’s wellbeing – food appears suddenly in his cell. After eating, he feels more determined than ever to figure his way out, at least for a while. Then he slips back into apathy. Perhaps truly all his captor intends is to drive him entirely out of his senses.

Still, he is a witcher, and it takes more than a bit of cold and hunger to weaken him in any significant way. Geralt can’t begin to imagine what the mage might have in store for him, but he is quite confident of his ability to make whatever it is more difficult than he intended. In any case, it seems to him that the food has begun to appear a bit more frequently, or perhaps he’s just adjusting to this bizarre routine. He can only hope that the sorcerer has been more consistent about feeding Roach.

The next time he awakens, he’s no longer in his cell, but immobilized and tied to a table. Dim as it is, the candlelight is blinding after so long in the dark. The air around him is thick with the smell of herbs and metal.

Bile immediately rises in his throat. His muscles tense, instinctively anticipating pain. Kaer Morhen – that was the last time he was bound to a table like this. Decades and decades ago. His body has not forgotten. He has to force himself to breathe normally, to remember where he is – and when.

This time, he is not an adolescent weakened by the Trial of the Grasses. This time, he knows what to expect. He can find some way to fight back.

The shackles binding his wrists now are dimeritium, not rope. This mage is either extremely cautious or well informed of witchers’ magical abilities.

“Intending to torture me?” he snarls. “You won’t get anywhere. Witchers can’t be tortured. I’ll die before I tell you anything.”

The mage’s voice comes from somewhere over his head.

“Yes, so I’ve heard. I don’t know that I’m convinced, though. How is the body to differentiate between deliberate torture and your everyday work? You lot would hardly be of much use if you expired at the first hint of pain. And anyway, even if the rumors are true, you are said to be exceptionally resilient, even for a witcher.”

Geralt almost relaxes. If this sorcerer seeks information on Ciri and her powers, he won’t get it out of him. Geralt will gladly die before giving her up.

“Unfortunately for you. You won’t get anything out of me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. You may prove as useful to me dead as alive, if it comes to that. For now, though, we’ll start small. Some blood and tissue samples to begin with. We’ll work our way gradually to the more invasive procedures.”

Geralt bares his teeth, unable to do anything more than growl in protest. But something doesn’t add up.

“What are you talking about? What procedures?”

“Well, that depends on initial results, of course, but no doubt I’ll need samples of bone and brain matter. And your eyes are of course the subject of much debate in certain circles.”

Realization hits him like a blow.

“You’re trying to create witchers. To reinvent the process.”

“Hardly,” the mage laughs. “Far from it! The last thing this world needs is more of you. If your kind have ever had any use, you’ve long since outlasted it.”

Geralt sighs, now more exasperated than anything else. “I see. So you’re going to do the world a favor by ridding it of one more witcher. Go ahead, then, better get it over with.”

“I think not. I aim to ensure at least something good comes of your existence. And you, Geralt of Rivia, are an especially interesting case. Surely you must recognize that.”

“You think by studying me you can find a way to kill witchers?” Geralt laughs. “Any peasant with a pitchfork can already do that. You’re wasting your time.”

“I admit, some of the experiments I’ve planned are primarily to satisfy my own curiosity. The question of witchers’ elven ancestry, for example. But no, Geralt, that is not why you are here.

“Then what?”

The mage steps around the table until he’s within Geralt’s line of sight. He is physically unremarkable – without his medallion, Geralt might never have recognized him as a sorcerer – but his eyes glow with a cruelty and arrogance that he finds familiar. He has seen it often enough in those who believe they are not only better-informed, but simply better than everyone else.

“Not so long ago, there were many mages who agreed with me, even if they would not say so publicly. Witchers have always been a mistake, a corruption of our magical abilities and knowledge. It is not our right to meddle so with nature. I daresay the sorcerers who created your kind knew so when they made you infertile. They were driven by fear, a fear of the monstrous and unknown which blinded them to the recklessness of their mistakes. But of late the tide has begun to change. ‘Witchers cannot be so bad,’ people think. Listen to the songs they sing about witchers now. Celebrity witchers! Witchers with families. With feelings. It is a lie, Geralt, and you and I both know it. A lie I intended to disprove as visibly as possible.”

“By keeping me locked in a cell? Truly, your brilliance dazzles the mind.”

The mage smirks. “No, Witcher. But that’s enough talking. You may have all the time in the world, but I certainly don’t.”

Geralt doesn’t bother putting up a show of resistance as the mage collects his samples. True to his word, he sticks to drawing blood from Geralt’s arm. It’s unpleasant, but certainly not so terrible as tortures go, except for all the echoes of Kaer Morhen. Geralt still isn’t sure whether the resemblance is intentional or simply shared by all magical medical facilities.

“Do I at least get to know who has the privilege of studying me?”

“Ah, yes, I did forget to introduce myself. Ireneus var Steingard, at your service.”

“Never heard of you.”

“Really? Well, no matter. I don’t take offense. I suppose I have devoted myself more to the internal workings of magic than my more public-minded colleagues. I have no interest in the proceedings of courts and kingdoms except as they concern my research, you see.”

Geralt snorts, wondering if Ireneus merely plans to irritate him to death by being insufferable. Though he isn’t sure what that would accomplish in terms of slandering witchers.

“You may scoff, but where do you imagine your witcher’s potions and decoctions were developed, if not in a mage’s laboratory? Ill-advised as that research was, you owe your existence to it.”

Geralt ignores that.

He doesn’t remember blacking out, but the next thing he knows, he’s back in his cell. He feels alert enough to be sure that most of his blood is still within his body, so Ireneus must have knocked him unconscious with magic. Another charming habit of his. Not to mention one that makes escape that much more difficult.

There’s a plate of food waiting for him as well. Slightly more than usual, as though to make up for the blood Ireneus drew. Geralt half-considers ignoring it. It’s difficult to imagine eating with the lingering taste of herbs still in his mouth, reminding him of the elixirs in the Trial of the Grasses.

Elixirs.

There are elixirs in the food.

The thought chills him to the core. It would explain a lot. The bursts of energy followed by deep exhaustion. The renewed determination to escape after each meal. Even the subtle changes to his night vision and his sensitivity to light. The one thing it doesn’t explain is what Ireneus is playing at.

He takes a bite of the food, and sure enough: the taste is unmistakable now that he’s looking for it. Well-hidden, perhaps even magically concealed, but distinctive. More than just bad prison food. He wonders how he could ever have missed it.

He overturns the plate and lets the food spill to the floor. Whatever this is, he won’t play along with it.

As he expects, it’s not long before he wakes up in the laboratory again. Ireneus is standing in front of him.

“You will eat, Witcher, or you will ingest the elixirs by force. I will not have any hunger strikes.”

Geralt just glares at him.

Ireneus sighs, as though being left with no choice.

“By force, then. You know, Witcher, you’ve proven remarkably resistant to chemical sedatives. I wonder how long that will remain the case as I increase the dosage of the elixirs. It seems as they enhance the reflexes and senses, they wreak other kinds of havoc. On the immune system and stress hormones, for instance. At great cost, I imagine, to even a witcher’s reserves of energy.”

Ireneus steps over to a bench on Geralt’s right, and it is then that he notices the glass bulbs and tubes—instruments very much like those at Kaer Morhen. Geralt has to lock his muscles to avoid flinching as Ireneus jams a needle into his arm.

 _At least_ , he thinks, a little wildly, _at least I won’t have to taste it_.

He watches as the dark liquid seeps, viscous, down the tube and into his arm. Watches the color in his skin fade and the veins darken, black against white.

“Fascinating,” Ireneus mutters.

He quickly decides that he’d prefer the taste after all. The elixirs were only ever meant to be ingested, not injected directly into the skin. His whole arm feels as cold as ice, the chill creeping slowly through his shoulder to his throat and chest. Then a terrible numbness that makes him fear paralysis. Finally, a burning sensation, like a match being held to his skin.

This is wrong. It isn’t meant to be like this. The potions will kill him if he’s lucky and permanently disable him if he’s not.

“Stop. What are you doing?” he demands through gritted teeth.

Ireneus ignores him. “Fascinating,” he repeats. “A kind of reversible necrosis? It doesn’t seem possible, but then, stranger things have been known to occur…perhaps a way of diverting resources to other parts of the body…”

Geralt tastes blood. His vision goes hazy, punctuated by occasional flashes of light.

“Stop—”

When he loses consciousness, it’s due not to any spell or magical substance, but to pain alone.

He regrets waking up, for when he does, every muscle in his body screams in protest. It feels as though his chest is being crushed by stone. For a moment, he struggles even to breathe and to control his racing heartbeat. Judging by the dryness of his mouth, he’s been unconscious for a full day, if not longer.

Just focusing his vision on the ceiling above him takes a long time. He realizes he’s still in the laboratory, probably still bound to the table. He can’t be sure, as he’s only vaguely aware of his limbs. It takes enormous concentration to finally twitch his fingers.

“Good, you’re awake,” Ireneus says. “Very good results from that test. Excellent, in fact. I’ve never seen reactions like that from human tissue, never. Though I suppose you’re no longer truly human.” He waves a hand in front of Geralt’s eyes. “Still with us? I suppose we should give your system some time to recover before attempting any further experiments.”

“What—what the _fuck_ did you do?”

“That, I think, remains to be seen, Witcher.”

*

After that, pain becomes the one way he can reliably keep track of time. A dull, constant ache means he is in his cell, recovering from the latest round of experiments and potions. Sharp pain mean he is in Ireneus’s laboratory, undergoing one test or another. He keeps discovering new incisions, the longest of which is a long row of stitches just under his ribs. He suspects that Ireneus has taken a sample of bone from his left leg, for he can hardly stand to put weight on it, when he can stand at all. Those are his waking hours.

Then there are the dreams. He sees Ciri die over and over, always unable to save her. Sometimes he wields the sword, while other times he’s merely too late. Jaskier and Yennefer appear too, turning to ash in his arms again and again.

_Why? How could you do this? Why weren’t you there?_

He begins to see them in his waking hours, too. Illusions or hallucinations, he doesn’t know. It matters little, in the end.

As in the Trials so many years ago, something in him refuses to break. It should be easy, he thinks, to stop fighting. To slip out of consciousness and never wake up, as so many other young witchers did. Or to give himself over fully to the dreams and stop trying to discern illusions from reality or keep track of the passing days. It would be easy, yet something in him can’t do it. It isn’t a conscious decision. It’s just the way that it is. As though he’s waiting for something to change. Just a little longer. Just one more day.

And then, one day, he comes to in the laboratory with Ireneus leaning over him, feeling more awake than he has in weeks.

“Why isn’t it working?”

Geralt tries to shove him away. He wants to go back to sleep. For once, he hadn’t had any dreams.

“I don’t understand. All my studies indicate that the elixirs should incite bloodlust, rage. Not—not whatever this is, this absurd _protective instinct_ you seem to be displaying.”

His voice is extremely grating. Geralt tries to push him back again, and then he realizes. For once, his hands are free.

“What am I missing? Tell me!”

Ireneus slams his hands down on the table, snapping Geralt into full alertness.

“Maybe,” he says, “you don’t know as much about witchers as you think you do.”

The mage turns on his heel, stalking away from the table. Geralt flexes his ankles, wondering if he can make the sprint to the door while Ireneus’s back is turned.

“How are you doing it?”

“Doing what?”

“Feigning emotional responses, obviously. I admit, you’re better at it than I imagined you could be. It’s no wonder people believe witchers have feelings these days. Anyone would think you genuinely care about the girl, this Ciri. But I know better. You can’t fool me. I know you’re incapable of it, and I’ll prove it yet.”

Geralt places one foot on the floor, moving slowly and soundlessly. “And how do you plan to do that, exactly?”

“Stay where you are,” Ireneus snaps, twisting his hand in the air. Geralt feels a jolt like an electric shock, and his leg folds beneath him. He just manages to catch himself on the edge of the table, though the effort sends a spasm of pain through the incision on his side.

“I don’t need to prove anything to you, Witcher. Or to myself. I’ve already demonstrated that your first instinct is to kill, even those you claim you love. I can force you to reveal that instinct again.”

“You can’t. You won’t.”

Ireneus turns. “I can. Perhaps you do truly care for the girl. Or believe you do. Still, it makes no difference. When you arrived here, you struck without a thought. As you were made to do.”

“You tricked me.”

“I created the illusion, yes. But I held no sway over your mind. Your actions were all your own. Had she been real, you would have killed her. You imagine yourself a hero, designed to protect the innocent? You were designed to kill.”

“I know that,” Geralt spits through gritted teeth. “But I can choose to do otherwise.”

“Your emotions are an act, nothing more. You imitate what you see others feel and convince yourself that you feel it to. It isn’t real, Witcher, whatever you imagine you feel. It’s a lie. A dangerous one. And it will kill her. Or rather, you will.”

At that, Geralt lunges, intent only on getting his hands around the sorcerer’s neck. Let him see what a witcher is capable of, then.

There’s a sudden great rush of noise, and the room around him vanishes before he reaches his target. Black overtakes his vision. Someone cries out in alarm—a voice Geralt recognizes. A wave of nausea crashes over him, as though he’s fighting to keep his balance on the deck of a swaying boat. A portal, he thinks. It must have been.

Before he can regain his senses, the voice’s owner throws their arms around his neck.

“Geralt! You’re alive!”

Geralt staggers, still half-wild and dazed and furious. But he knows that voice. That scent. Wildflowers and scented soap and Jaskier’s hair.

“Jaskier?” Carefully, he hugs the bard back, afraid of moving too suddenly. His hands still twitch at the thought of getting them around Ireneus’s throat. But his anger rapidly melts away. Jaskier – alive and warm and solid against him – is all that matters, all he can process.

“No. Wait—Jaskier, you shouldn’t be here.”

Jaskier ignores that, leaning back a little to look him in the eye.

“ _Fuck_. What’s that mage been doing to you? I can barely see a thing in here, but you look...well, you’ve looked better. Plus, you’re burning up. You’re not sick, are you? You can’t be.”

Rather than wait for an answer, he lifts his hand to Geralt’s face, running a thumb below his eye. Geralt leans into his touch without thinking, letting his eyes drift shut. He hadn’t realized fully how much he _missed_ Jaskier. Missed his voice, the touch of his hand. Missed his concern, misplaced as it always is. After so long in silence and in pain, Jaskier is more than a balm – he’s a panacea. Better than waking from a bad dream.

“Jaskier—”

“Come on, let’s sit.”

Jaskier’s hand on his arm guides him down to the floor. He leans against the wall, then lets his head drop to Jaskier’s shoulder. He’s so tired, suddenly. So exhausted that he aches.

“Gods,” Jaskier whispers. “He really has done something awful to you, hasn’t he?”

“It’s not that bad. I can handle it.”

“You’re not about to…I don’t know, expire on me, are you?” Jaskier’s voice sounds facetious, but Geralt can hear the fear in it.

“No. Just tired. Don’t worry.”

“If you say so.”

Geralt closes his eyes again, listening to Jaskier’s steady heartbeat.

“I missed you,” he hears himself say.

“Did you?”

“I did.”

The smile in Jaskier’s voice is audible. “I missed you, too.” He traces his finger down Geralt’s arm. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“It’ll heal.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know. I’m not dying. I just need…to sleep.”

Jaskier wraps his arms tighter around Geralt. “You can sleep. I’ll be here.”

“Mm.”

Geralt doesn’t know whether he sleeps or not, but when he opens his eyes again, Jaskier is still there, his arm still around Geralt’s shoulders.

“Better? You look better.”

If anything, the pain in Geralt’s side is worse, but his head is clearer. He sits up.

“Jaskier, what are you doing here?”

“Being held prisoner, of course. Same as you. Before that, looking for you.”

“By yourself?”

“Well, that wasn’t the original plan, no. Ciri and Yennefer—”

“They’re here?” Geralt’s breath catches in his throat.

“No. Well, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I got snatched by a portal ten minutes into the rescue mission. Next thing I knew I was here.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Oh, my pride is wounded immensely. I’m afraid I’ll never recover.”

Geralt stares at him.

Jaskier is so perfectly…Jaskier, from his scent to his jokes to the pieces of hair falling into his face. It’s too good to be true. Why would Ireneus spend days torturing him only to throw them together in a cell?

“This sorcerer is certainly fond of his portals, isn’t he?” Jaskier comments, continuing his show of bravado. Usually, that cavalier note in his voice means he’s afraid and trying to hide it. Geralt has heard it a hundred times. He desperately wants to believe this is Jaskier, brash and talkative and warm as ever. But it’s too perfect.

Geralt pulls free of Jaskier’s grip.

“Geralt? What’s the matter?”

“This is a trick.”

“What?”

“You can’t be here.”

“Where else am I supposed to be? Hey—!”

Geralt pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the pain in his legs, getting as far away from Jaskier as the tiny cell allows.

“You’re an illusion. I won’t fall for it again.”

Jaskier’s mouth falls open. He scrambles to his feet too, holding his hands out as if demonstrating he doesn’t have a weapon. As if he would ever be carrying one.

“An illusion? Is that—is that what the sorcerer has been doing to you? Geralt, I promise, I—”

“Stop. Stop talking.”

For once, Jaskier does.

“Why are you here?” Geralt continues, thinking aloud. “Just to torment me? To get me to tell you something?”

He doesn’t want to consider the alternative, that Jaskier is here so that Ireneus can make him kill him.

Jaskier shrugs helplessly. “It’s just me, Geralt, I swear. I only got here a few days ago.”

“I can’t trust you. You can’t be here.”

“Please, just tell me what’s going on. You disappear, I get magically kidnapped, and then you show up looking half-dead and then saying I’m not real. What does this sorcerer even want with you? Or with us, I guess.”

Geralt just glares at him.

“Wait. What if I can prove it’s me? Say something only I would be able to say.”

“No. He could be reading my thoughts.”

“So there’s nothing? Nothing I can say to prove it’s me?”

“Not likely.”

Jaskier frowns, then snaps his fingers. “Wait, I know. All we need is something that’s not in your memories, but you’ll know is true when I say it.”

“Is that all?”

“I have an idea.” Jaskier smirks. “Do you remember the song I was singing before you gave me your last coin in Posada?”

“Yes,” Geralt says warily. “I remember no one liked it.”

Jaskier puts a hand to his chest. “Ah, you wound me. Not _that_ one, the one before it. The one I was singing when you walked in.”

Geralt thinks back. He remembers being irritated by the noise as he entered, having hoped for a quiet tavern in which to drink an ale and find a bit of peace before seeking out a contract. He remembers Jaskier shooting looks in his direction the whole time, full of flirtatious smiles and unearned confidence. He doesn’t remember the song. In truth, he had probably been doing his best to block it out.

He shakes his head.

“Would you know it if you heard it?”

“Maybe.”

“Right. Well.” Jaskier clears his throat. “Hope this works.”

He starts to sing. The song is absurdly out of place for a dungeon, but after a moment, Geralt realizes the melody _is_ familiar. It’s not one of Jaskier’s but an old folk tune, something saccharine about a fair maiden and the beast she falls in love with, who reveals himself to be but a man at true love’s kiss. It sparks something in Geralt’s memory. He remembers thinking that he’d dealt with a curse like that once, but it wasn’t a kiss that undid the curse at all—

“That’s not how it works.”

“You do remember!”

Geralt shakes his head, smiling despite himself. “I remember that it’s a ridiculous song.”

“Yes, it does seem a bit on the nose now, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Anyway, do you believe me now?”

“I believe that Ireneus doesn’t have the imagination to make an illusion of you give a live performance in a dungeon.”

Jaskier shrugs. “Good enough for me.”

“I’d still rather you had been an illusion,” Geralt sighs. He takes a step back towards Jaskier and sits down again against the wall. “It would have meant you and Yen and Ciri are safe somewhere.”

Jaskier sits down beside him. “You think we’d ever not come to rescue you?”

Geralt snorts. “I don’t need rescuing.”

“Right, of course, you’re stuck in a cell of your own volition, looking half dead. Well then, we’d better tell Yennefer to call the whole thing off.”

Geralt can practically hear Jaskier rolling his eyes.

“But seriously, Geralt, what are you doing here? What does this sorcerer want with you?”

Geralt sighs. “He wants to prove to the world that witchers are monsters. He thinks your songs have given us – me in particular – too much good press.”

“What—really?” Jaskier sounds as though he doesn’t know whether to be horrified by the idea or flattered that his work made such an impression. “What does that have to do with the illusions, then? And why do you look like you’re about to drop dead? And what are you doing here? In my cell, I mean.”

Geralt can only shrug. “I don’t know what his plan is. So far he wants samples of my blood and puts elixirs in my food. The illusions were to draw me here, I think. I think he’s trying to provoke me to something.” He can’t bring himself to tell Jaskier about his visions of Ciri. It feels as though speaking them aloud will somehow make them real.

“What the _hell_ , Geralt? He’s…experimenting on you?”

“Let him. Better me than you. Or some elf or peasant with a touch of magic, more likely. Seems he doesn’t appreciate sharing abilities with the unwashed masses.”

“Better you than—Geralt, you didn’t see yourself when you portaled in. You looked awful.”

He shrugs again. “It’s the potions.”

“It’s more than that. But why is he giving you witcher’s elixirs? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he has a death wish as well. The last time he summoned me he didn’t even have me restrained. If he hadn’t teleported me here, I could have—”

Jaskier swallows. “What if that was on purpose? You said he meant to provoke you. Is that why he…threw you in here with me?”

Geralt’s blood runs cold. “What do you mean?”

“Geralt, what if he meant for you to kill me?”

“Why would I do that? I wouldn’t—I’d never hurt you.”

“I know that, but maybe he doesn’t. You said he hates witchers. Maybe he thinks that if he got you angry, fed you potions…you’d act without thinking.”

“I wouldn’t, Jaskier, I would never—”

“I know that, Geralt. I know. Of course you wouldn’t.”

All Geralt can see is Ciri. Bleeding. Betrayed. His fault. He might have hurt Jaskier by accident, unthinkingly, especially as furious as he was at Ireneus—

Jaskier grabs his arm. “We’ll get out of here, Geralt. Yennefer and Ciri will find us. You’ll see. It’ll be all right.”

Geralt can’t answer him. The awful pressure in his throat and chest has come back, choking any reply he might give.

A sudden blinding light cuts off anything Jaskier might have been about to say. Jaskier yelps and shields his eyes.

“You,” Ireneus says coldly, “are not Princess Cirilla.”

Still squinting, Jaskier looks up at him. “Um. Guilty?”

“Only one non-magician teleported onto the grounds. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“How should I know? You’re the one who teleported me in here!”

“Jaskier,” Geralt warns, but the bard is already getting to his feet.

“No. No, he should be the one explaining what’s going on! Hey, you wizard fuck! What do you want with us?”

Ireneus steps through the iron bars as if they were made of water and backhands Jaskier across the face. Jaskier drops like a stone, but Geralt is relieved to hear him cursing from the moment he hits the floor.

“Leave him. He has nothing to do with this.”

“That may be,” Ireneus says. “In which case, I have no further need of him.” He waves a hand, and chains spring up around Jaskier’s wrists.

“I hope Yennefer pulls your still-beating heart out of your chest,” Jaskier hisses, spitting blood out of his mouth.

Ireneus doesn’t spare him so much as a look. Instead, he seizes Geralt by the shirt and opens another portal. Geralt catches a glimpse of the stone walls of his own cell before his head strikes the floor.


	6. ciri

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: More medical torture, death

The days pass in a blur. Geralt’s hours are again divided only by darkness and light, dull pain and sharp pain, but he no longer even attempts to keep track of the time passing. He barely registers the difference between the times he can feel the effects of the potions and the times he can’t. All his waking hours now are the same, marked by exhaustion that saps all his will to resist, to think. To do more than exist, moment to moment. In his more lucid states, he fears for Jaskier, but most of the time he has no energy to spare on worry, for himself or anyone else. He is less and less certain that he really saw Jaskier at all—it seems as though it must have been another dream.

Now, when he dreams, he dreams of Kaer Morhen. Of training and the Changes. Of the thousand ways his body could and has failed him – legs collapsing under him as he sprinted the Trail, lungs gasping for air as he swam, arms moving too slowly to parry a blow in fighting practice. Heart stuttering as it fought the effects of potions remaking him from the inside. Ireneus’s voice threads through all the dreams.

_Subject remains partially conscious through all but the longest exploratory surgeries. Demonstrates little to no symptoms of shock._

_Strangely, no signs of elven ancestry. Further research needed._

_Remarkable resistance to poison – effects disappear in a matter of hours. Not suitable for causing hallucinations capable of inducing berserker state. I am still certain there must be some substance which can produce the intended effects._

And then, abruptly, the tortures stop. Geralt is returned without explanation to the floor of his cell, where he lies for hours, expecting to wake and find himself in Ireneus’s laboratory again at any moment. Days pass. He thinks – hopes, really – that Yennefer must have arrived at last. Then he wakes again and finds food waiting just inside his cell, just as before.

He knows immediately that the doses are too high this time. Ireneus has miscalculated, or else he finally means to kill him. Witcher’s potions might not have the same deadly effect on him that they do on humans, but that doesn’t make them safe. Far from it.

It is faster this time, ice and numbness and fire gripping his limbs in quick succession. The dark and empty world of his cell is too much, too bright, though he knows it’s not his senses but his mind firing off false inputs as it struggles to keep him alive.

His heartbeat stutters, then stops.

*

Yennefer takes the lead as they move from the spot where Jaskier was kidnapped. She navigates by magic, following the traces of Ireneus’s power and leaving Ciri to keep an eye on the forest around them, which seems to grow darker and less natural with every step they take. Ciri keeps one hand on her sword, ready to strike at the first sign of trouble – humanoid or otherwise.

Yennefer is shielding them from Ireneus’s detection as well as navigating. Her face is pale and her arms shake from the strain, but she only presses her lips together and shakes her head when Ciri asks if they should pause a moment.

“We’re close. I can feel it. I can no longer shield us completely, only hide our exact location. It will have to do.”

“This feels too easy,” Ciri says.

Yennefer laughs. “Does it? Try maintaining two spells at once after teleporting three people.”

“I mean finding this place. And the fact that this forest is clearly enchanted, but we’ve not run into anything yet. It’s like Ireneus intends for us to come after Geralt.”

“Perhaps he does, the arrogant prick.” Yennefer grimaces. “But we shall make him regret it.”

Abruptly, the trees begin to thin out.

“Is this it?” Ciri asks as she steps into the clearing.

Yennefer shakes her head, frowning. “There’s nothing here.”

“Maybe it’s hidden? Disguised with magic?”

“No. There’s nothing.”

Ciri bends down to inspect something on the ground. “Someone’s been through here. Yennefer, is this—?”

“The clearing where we arrived.” Yennefer spits. “Fuck!”

“But we’ve been walking in the same direction this whole time. The sun’s been to our back. We can’t have gone in circles.”

“It’s magic. A spell confusing our sense of direction. Fuck that mage!”

“What do we do now?”

Yennefer bites her lip. “I think we’ll have to teleport again. Not by my magic—by yours.”

“Me? But I don’t know where we’re going. I could take us years in the future, or—or some other world entirely!”

“We have to risk it. Your dreams, your connection to Geralt must count for something. And Ireneus won’t be able to guard against it. Yes, I think it will work. It has to.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“Concentrate, Ciri. You can do this. It’s only a short distance.”

Ciri closes her eyes and reaches for Yennefer’s hand, taking a deep and steadying breath the way Geralt once taught her to. She reaches out towards her power, for the sense of connection points in time and space, and feels for where Geralt might be. It’s like searching for a single snowflake in the midst of a blizzard, but when she finds it, she’s sure of it.

A castle looms suddenly in front of them, as menacing and as artificial-looking as the forest around it. Yennefer drops her hand and staggers back, pressing a hand to her forehead.

“Is it always so disorienting to be teleported by someone else?”

Ciri can’t help but smile. “Most of the time, yes. Did we make it? Do you sense anything?”

“Only magic. But this is the right place.”

“Hopefully the right time, too.”

“We’ll soon find out.” Yennefer shoots a glance at her daughter. “Ready?”

“We just walk in? Just like that?”

“Just like that. I’m sick to death of cryptic dreams and magic forests. Besides, you’ve no doubt confused our trail for a moment. Let’s seize the opportunity.”

“I’m all for that.” Ciri draws her sword. “Let’s go.”

She leads the way to the entrance of the keep, prepared for anything except the silence and stillness they find within.

“Are we too late? Did I take us into the future?”

Yennefer shakes her head. “I don’t think so. There’s magic here.”

Ciri kicks aside a piece of rubble with her foot. “This place is falling to bits.”

“Typical sorcerer. Living in squalor with his head stuck in a book somewhere.”

“There’s a trapdoor here. Down?”

“Down,” Yennefer agrees.

Ciri drops down first.

“There’s stairs,” she reports. Yennefer follows her.

The stairs lead, predictably, to a long corridor with dozens of offshoots branching in the distance, all lined with cells. The space is lit with only a single torch at the foot of the stairs.

“Next we’ll find a secret laboratory,” Yennefer mutters. She conjures a light in the palm of her hand and starts walking.

“Geralt?” Ciri calls. “Are you there?”

“Careful,” Yennefer warns. “Ireneus is skilled with illusions, remember. If not particularly imaginative.”

“I’m careful,” Ciri grumbles.

“Yennefer? Ciri? Is that you?” Jaskier’s voice, coming from the cell off to their left, sounds closer than Yennefer had expected.

“Jaskier! It’s us,” Ciri says, ignoring Yennefer’s previous warning. “Are you hurt?”

“Nothing a hot bath, a change of clothes, and a good night’s sleep won’t fix. Is Geralt with you?”

“We’re looking for him,” Yennefer says, twisting her fingers to undo the spells reinforcing the lock on Jaskier’s cell. When she finishes, she steps back from the door, nodding at Ciri to pick the lock. Which she does, with obvious pleasure.

Jaskier’s face appears suddenly behind the bars. His hands are tied and his nose and chin are crusted with dried blood, but he his eyes are focused and he stands without help, if a little stiffly.

“Oh Jaskier, your nose,” Ciri whispers, looking up from the lock.

“Better my nose than my fingers,” Jaskier says brightly. “I’m hoping it will give me an adventurous sort of look.”

Ciri rolls her eyes. “Those black eyes will do wonders for your image.”

Yennefer waves her hand and the shackles on Jaskier’s wrists fall open. She throws him a cloth and a flask of water from her pack.

“Thanks. You wouldn’t believe how much dried blood itches. That’s better. Gods, the two of you are a sight for sore eyes. I mean, anything would be, at this point. This cell is fucking dark.”

“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Ciri says, pulling him in for a hug. “When you disappeared into that portal, we thought—”

“Ouch.” Jaskier winces. “And sore ribs. Sore everything, really. No, I’m all right, Ciri. I’m glad to see you. When that sorcerer, Ireneus, said it was you he was trying to capture, I worried—”

“He tried to capture Ciri?” Yennefer looks alarmed.

“He didn’t say why, exactly. I think that he’s—well, he’s trying to drive Geralt to do something awful without realizing. Something like…hurt Ciri. I’m not sure he even realized that Ciri has powers.”

“Obviously he doesn’t know very much about who he’s dealing with,” Ciri scoffs.

Jaskier looks up at Yennefer. “I’m sorry, Yennefer, for what it’s worth. You were right to be cautious.”

“I often am,” she says. Then she softens. “What matters is you’re still in one piece.”

He smiles, and after a moment, she smiles back.

“I just hope we can say the same for Geralt.”

“Do you know where he’s being held?” Yennefer asks.

“Somewhere down the next hall, I think. Or maybe upstairs. The sorcerer here keeps moving him around. He’s—well, he’s in worse shape than I am, I’m afraid. Or he was the last time I saw him. Which was a while ago.”

“A while? How long have you been here?” Ciri asks, her eyes widening in horror.

“A week and a half, maybe? Two? It’s hard to tell. Why, where have you been?”

“It’s only been a few hours for us. We had to portal in. Oh, Jaskier, I’m sorry, I tried to stay as close to the present as I could.”

Yennefer puts her hand on Ciri’s shoulder. “You did wonderfully. Two weeks is better than I dared hope for, under the circumstances. But now, let’s not make it any longer.”

Ciri nods. “Agreed.”

“So what’s the plan?” Jaskier asks.

“We’d better split up. Ireneus will track us down any moment, if he hasn’t already, and I doubt we’ll make it out of here without a fight. And we don’t know what state Geralt is in. Ciri, can you distract Ireneus while Jaskier and I find him?”

Ciri grins. “Definitely.”

“I should go with you,” Jaskier says. “I might know where Ireneus is keeping Geralt’s swords and things. There could be something we can use.”

“Fine. Be careful, both of you.”

“You too.”

“Always. Good luck.”

*

The sudden flare of light pierces Geralt’s cell, burning his oversensitive retinas. He blinks. Not dead after all, then. Again. Somehow.

It must be Ireneus, he thinks for a moment, back with some new experiment now that his subject is showing signs of life. Then he smells a familiar aroma of lilac and gooseberries.

His breath catches. So the mage has finally decided to torment him with illusions of Yennefer. Or maybe he’s just broken with reality at last. He has been waiting for this in some form or another since he arrived, but it doesn’t make the moment any easier.

 _Maybe_ , he thinks, _maybe Jaskier was right. Maybe Yennefer really has finally come_.

But he knows it’s too much to hope for. Maybe he has died after all. That seems somewhat more likely.

The illusion moves forward. As the light gets closer, Geralt raises a hand to shield his eyes, surprised to find that he has any control left over his body. Yennefer stops outside his cell, peering into the darkness.

“Geralt? Can you hear me?”

But this is not – cannot be – Yennefer, he reminds himself. He bites his tongue and tries to block the scent out of his mind.

With a muttered curse, she waves her hand, undoing the bindings on the lock and letting the door swing open. She approaches him slowly. _Like a wild animal_ , he thinks grimly. Well, that’s only fair.

He wonders what she must see as she crouches down beside him. Soulless eyes, inhumanely pale skin. A mutant, if not a monster.

She tilts her head. “That bad?”

When he doesn’t answer, she reaches out towards him.

“Don’t.” He jerks his head back, away from her hand.

“Geralt. You’re not dead, and I’m not an illusion. Ireneus might conjure a passable representation of me in a dream, but the real thing is beyond him.” She catches his wrist, feeling for his pulse.

“Your heart is racing,” she announces after a moment, as matter-of-fact as if she was observing the weather. “It’s faster than Jaskier’s. He’s been drugging you?”

At any other time, Geralt would let himself be impressed by how quickly she figures out what took him days, if not longer. He nods.

“Fuck,” she sighs. “All right. We have to get you out of here one way or another. Come on, put your arm around my shoulder.”

“Yen—”

“I know.” She leans forward suddenly, pressing her lips to his forehead. “I know, Jaskier told us. But we’ve got to go.”

He hisses in pain as she wraps an arm around his ribs.

“Not that side.”

“Sorry.”

With her help, he manages to stand. It doesn’t hurt as much as he expects. Which is not to say it doesn’t hurt.

“What hurts most?”

“Ah…my leg. The left one.”

She murmurs a spell, and the pain recedes. Somewhat.

“It’s not healed, just numbed,” she says. “Let’s go before it wears off.”

“Yen, wait. You said, ‘Jaskier told _us_.’”

“Me and Ciri, yes. We need to go.”

He sways on his feet. “Ciri is here?”

“You try stopping her when she’s made up her mind to go on a rescue mission. Especially one that concerns you,” Yennefer says drily.

“Yen, I can’t. I could—”

“What, hurt her? You can barely stand, and she’s got a sword.” She sighs, and her tone softens. “Geralt, listen to me. Whatever Ireneus said, whatever he did to you, it changes nothing about you. I would stake my life on it. Now, please, we’ll have all the time in the world to discuss this once we’re out of the castle.”

Stumbling and squinting, Geralt leaning heavily on Yennefer’s arm, they make their way out of the dungeons. Once out in the hall, they are promptly greeted by a sudden clang of metal.

“By the gods, Yennefer, you scared the life out of me,” Jaskier yelps. He inhales sharply at the sight of Geralt. Then he beams.

“You’re alive.” He shoves his armload of Geralt’s swords into Yennefer’s free hand and hugs him gingerly.

“Where’s Ciri?” Yennefer asks once he finally lets go.

“Oh, well done Jaskier, I hear you say. Excellent work getting Geralt’s irreplaceable swords and armor back from the insane wizard. Glad to see you’re all right.”

“Ciri,” Yennefer repeats.

“Creating a distraction and wreaking general havoc on his possessions, if all is going according to plan.”

“You left her alone?” Geralt growls.

“Alone with a _sword_ and the power to _teleport_ ,” Jaskier protests. “She was doing just fine when we split up. Having a rather good time, I might add.”

Before either Geralt or Yennefer can say anything else, Ciri comes sprinting into the hall, disheveled and red in the face, but unharmed.

“Geralt!”

He looks up, waiting for her expression to shift to horror, but her eyes hold only relief as she bounds toward him.

It’s nothing like he feared. Instead of seeing her death, he sees her only as she is now. As she launches herself into his arms, pain shoots down his leg, but he doesn’t care. She’s here. She’s safe.

“Oh, fuck,” Jaskier says, as a portal opens at the other end of the hall.

Yennefer lets go of both Geralt and the swords and throws a shield up around them. An instant later, a stream of fire slams into the wall. Yennefer screams but doesn’t falter. The air smells of lightning, thick enough to taste.

“Fire magic,” Ciri gasps.

“Fire magic,” Yennefer confirms. “This shield will only hold so long. We’ve got to go to him. Jaskier, stay here with Geralt.”

“Yen, no—”

“I said stay back!” she shouts. “Ciri, with me.”

Ciri glances back at Geralt before following, drawing her sword. As they approach, Ireneus sends fireball after fireball down on them, the last breaking Yennefer’s shield with an explosion that nearly knocks all of them off their feet.

Ciri is the first to recover her balance, spinning into an attack that should strike Ireneus’s head from his shoulders.

He dives forward at the last moment. His hands crackle with magical energy as he reaches out towards Yennefer. Depleted from maintaining the shield, she has no magic left to summon in time, and Ireneus knows it.

Just as he reaches her, Yennefer twists at the hips, throwing all of her power into her right fist, which connects with Ireneus’s jaw in a dull thunk not fully drowned out by her scream of fury. As he sprawls to the side, she calls down a bolt of pure energy, singeing his robes and beard.

Behind him, Ciri regains her footing and spins to counterattack. Ireneus, distracted by returning fire at Yennefer, reacts at the last second, exploding the ground beneath Ciri’s feet. Geralt feels his heart skip a beat in his chest, but she dives to the side and rolls over her shoulder to pop back up to her feet, sword in hand.

“Holy hell,” Jaskier breathes. He has one hand on Geralt’s shoulder and the other around his waist, as though unsure whether to hold him up or hold him back.

As they watch, one of Ireneus’s fireball makes it past Yennefer’s defenses. Her head snaps back as she reels from the blow.

With a scream, Ciri leaps forward, her sword flashing almost too fast for the eye to follow. Ireneus is forced to retreat, too busy dodging to summon any more fireballs. Yennefer wipes the blood from her nose with one hand while shooting fire with the other, cutting off his escape and causing him to stumble over his robes in his effort to flee Ciri’s blade.

She dashes forward and seizes the front of his robes in her left hand. Mage and witcher alike disappear in a flash of light.

“Ciri!” Yennefer and Geralt scream in unison.

There’s an answering crash above their heads, and then an awful noise—like the breaking of bone, but a hundred times louder. Jaskier cries out in horror.

Geralt looks up just in time to see one of the pillars holding up the second floor snap. Time seems to slow as the top of the pillar slides down along with the platform on top of it.

Howling, Geralt springs forward, only to be grabbed and dragged back by Yennefer.

“You can’t! You’ll be killed,” she shouts, nearly drowned out by the crash of falling stone and splintering wood. “We must go!” She pulls at his arm, trying to get him to move, to run, but he shakes her off, staring at the rubble and heedless of the chips of stone already falling around them.

“Ciri…”

“I saw, Geralt, I know! We have to leave before the roof caves in.” Yennefer’s face is streaked with tears and soot, but her jaw is set firmly.

“Yen, she’s in there!”

Jaskier joins in Yennefer’s effort trying to pull Geralt away from the castle. “Geralt, come on.”

Geralt smacks his hand away. “I won’t leave her.”

“I won’t lose you as well!” Yennefer shrieks in grief and frustration. “I won’t allow you to die here. Get up, Geralt, or I’ll make you.” Her palms crackle with magic.

“ _I won’t leave her._ ”

“Geralt, please,” Jaskier says, trying to reason with him. “If she’s in there, you can’t help her. If she made it out, she’ll be outside. We should go.”

This, and only this, gets Geralt to his feet. He follows Yennefer and Jaskier as they retreat out of the castle, looking back all the while for any sign of his daughter.

Outside, the air is deadly still. Geralt can detect no signs of either Ciri or the mage. As soon as Yennefer deems them safely away from the falling castle, he stops and refuses to be moved. Next to him, Yennefer falls to her hands and knees, wracked by sobs. Jaskier seems stunned, looking back at the castle with hands pressed to his mouth.

“Oh gods, Ciri…”

From an incline at the edge of the trees, they watch as the castle collapses in stages. First the roof caves, sending rubble cascading down the outside walls. Then an inner wall falls, and the whole structure folds in on itself like crumpled paper. Finally, there is silence.

Geralt groans as though mortally wounded. All he’s endured in the past weeks, he’s endured for Ciri. For her sake. For nothing. Only to have her die, and all because of the sorcerer he tried to save her from. No. Because of him. His fault. After all.

Staring at the ruins, he doesn’t hear twigs snap behind him. It’s Yennefer who looks up, rising to her feet. Jaskier turns to follow her gaze with his heart in his throat.

A tall, light-haired figure stumbles out of the bushes behind them, scratched and bruised but apparently otherwise unharmed.

“You made it out! You’re all right!”

Geralt turns just in time to catch her in his arms, his eyes wide and black and terrified.

“Ciri.”

Yennefer lets out a wordless cry and bolts forward, Jaskier right behind her, and then they’re all embracing and repeating each other’s names, not quite able to believe they’re all together in one piece.

Geralt has Ciri by the shoulders, looking her all over for injuries. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” Ciri laughs, relieved. “I’m fine. I promise. Just scratches.”

Geralt huffs, a sound that might have been a sob in anyone else’s throat.

Yennefer puts her hand to Ciri’s cheek. “My daughter. You were incredible.”

Ciri smiles, framed between them, and lets Geralt hug her again.

“Where’s Ireneus? Is he dead?”

Yennefer blinks, having hardly spared Ireneus a thought since Ciri disappeared. “It seems so. I can’t feel any trace of a magical signature.”

“I wasn’t gone long, was I?”

“No time at all. An eternity,” Yennefer says, planting a kiss on her daughter’s temple.

“Don’t ever do it again,” Jaskier adds.

Ciri laughs. “I don’t plan to. Can we leave?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end for now, as I am almost constitutionally incapable of meeting a deadline and this is what I managed to finish by my Big Bang posting date. but fear not, as I am also incapable of allowing these characters not to Confront and Deal with their Feelings. I promised h/c and by god I will deliver.


End file.
